Re: [BIBFRAME] Failure

Posting to Bibframe

On 06/02/2017 16:32, Jeff Edmunds wrote:

Your final paragraph is what intrigues me most. How, in fact, would widespread adoption by libraries of BIBFRAME (or whatever it evolves into) affect user experience? Would they find more resources? Would they find them more quickly? Would resources discovered be better contextualized, such that information literacy would be in some sense built into search results? I doubt it.

Again, when someone makes their data available in RDF and linked data, that doesn’t mean that the owners of that data will be able to do something they couldn’t already have done with their own data. Sure, some things may get easier and others may get harder, but when you are dealing with your own data, you can already do whatever you want to with it. The purpose of RDF/Linked data is to allow others to use your data in better, easier, and more standardized ways than putting your data up in Excel files or something similar. If a library wants to use linked data from some other sites in their catalog, e.g. from Wikipedia/Wikidata, they can do it right now without having to turn their own data into RDF.

So, putting our data in Bibframe/RDF will allow non-library agencies to create tools such as an “Uber” but they will be able to include Bibframe library data, e.g. something that brings together Bibframe data, Wikidata, and the Google Art Project might be useful–if it doesn’t exist already. Still, just because you put your data into RDF and make it openly available, doesn’t guarantee that anyone will use your data, and a glance at the Linked Open Data cloud (http://lod-cloud.net/) will show lots of linked data sites that perhaps no one has ever used.

One app I have considered making would bring together images and information for visitors to some of the museums in Rome. For instance, there is a fabulous museum of musical instruments and when I visited it, I kept thinking it would be great to be able to hear how those instruments sound. Additional information about the instruments would be OK too. There would be a lot of ways to make it, but one way of creating a tool such as this would be to include, e.g. the LOD information from Wikipedia/Wikidata. Would I use Bibframe information if it were available? Maybe. I don’t know if letting someone in a museum know what is available from a library would be all that useful for them or not–but I must say that if there is no option to use library data, it certainly cannot be used at all.

Additionally, RDF/Linked data is not the only way to use information from other sites. The fabulously popular Google Maps uses a different technology (API) which is simpler for everyone to implement and there are tons of all kinds of APIs (https://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory). Worldcat has APIs but I’m not sure they are open or not.

That said, we should make library data available in formats other than Z39.50 and it should have been done at least 20 years ago. I am for the Bibframe project, but we shouldn’t expect libraries to do anything new with their own data than what they have been doing all along.